Colin Taber - RED - Burning Skies

Wei sped up his pace, excited by what lay ahead. “What have you been doing down here?”

The closer he got, the warmer the air, and the more humid, too.

“A few dozen of you did this?”

“And the others.”

“Who are these others?”

“You’re about to find out.”

A few moments later, they came to the path’s end.

The paving stopped where the tunnel came into the side of a huge lava tube well over fifty meters wide. The path finished as a lookout, and from that landing there was a set of steps that wound down the tube’s rocky side, until they found the bottom of the huge tunnel.

Down at the bottom, under the lookout, a pool of water sat with a surrounding ring of greenery. The planted area was brightly lit by grow lights suspended from wires.

Wei said, “Look at your crops, at what you’re growing! I can see rice, tomatoes, melons, and beans—even corn!”

Around the edge of the water were the lower-growing melons and plants. Steadily the greenery got taller, graduating to tomatoes and beans, before several stands of corn. Scattered around the plantings were paths and fruit trees. A clump of bamboo also grew at one end of the greenery, which spread along a one-hundred-meters-long section of the tunnel, where it hit the sectioning wall that held the pressurized atmosphere in.

Ghost said, “The end walls are four meters thick.”

“Robo units?”

“Yes, it’s the only way we can do anything like this. And while we might struggle to get some supplies, robots are one thing we have plenty of.”

“It’s astounding!”

“Come down and have a closer look.”

He eagerly followed her down.

The path led them to the bottom of the lava tube, a space that levelled out and quickly went from rock to rich soil.

Wei breathed in deeply, savoring the scent on the air.

There were some people ahead, so he followed Ghost as she made her way towards them, where they stood talking beside the pond where two men turned over the soil.

Wei was a little surprised. “I thought I was only going to see women here?”

Ghost chuckled. “Disappointed?”

He smiled at that. “No, I just figured everyone here would be from your base.”

“Over the years, we’ve managed to get three full base crews—two of women, one of men—as well as some people who were stranded or lost on the surface alone.”

Wei stopped as they closed on the people. He’d heard something even more surprising than his discovery that there were other men here.

Someone ahead was speaking English!

The closer he got and the clearer his view, he soon realized that not everyone working the soil or talking to those who did were Chinese. He could hear someone with an English accent and two people who sounded like they were straight off a Californian beach.

Ghost turned and reached out to him, her fingers wrapping around his hand.

The touch was electric after so many days of being stuck in his suit.

She smiled and squeezed his hand. “Come on. They’re scientists from a research foundation based in Canada.”

He followed her.

They were both tired, so Wei and Ghost had left the lava tube after introductions to seek a chance to clean up, eat, and have some rest. As they walked through the tunnel back toward the living quarters, though, Wei remembered he still did not have his answer as to how the Renegades generated their power.

He asked her, “You never showed me how you generate your power.”

She was tired, but gave a nod. “You will have questions, but you must save them for later after we’ve had some rest.”

He agreed.

She led him down another tunnel, one little used and only dimly lit.

They went through two more airlocks and past warning signs that showed biohazard symbols.

There were also signs showing the image of the black lotus.

Finally, they came to a door with a rack of surface suits hanging from it.

“We won’t go in, but you can see it through the window of the airlock here. You must never go in unsuited.”

“What is it?”

Ghost gestured for him to step up and look.

He leaned in to look through the first airlock door’s window, peering through the next into the chamber beyond. There was a large cave in there, all lit by grow lights. The walls were painted white, where they showed, but the ground and lower walls were covered by round, shiny black leaves. There was something a little too perfect about them, in shape and form, as well as finish. They also bore a metallic sheen.

Wei asked, “What is it?”

“That’s what grows from the seeds that come out of those pods.”

“Really?”

“Yes, but they are like a parasite. While they can grow like a running bamboo, they also put roots into other organics and feed off them.”

The black leaves, almost perfectly round, spread vertically so they could absorb as much light from above as possible.

Wei asked, “So, how do you use it for power? Do you burn them or crush them for oil?”

“No. There’s something really strange about them. Something a little too perfect. The leaves are quite literally solar panels. You can connect to it and draw a charge.”

“What!”

“We think they’ve been engineered.”

Wei just stared at them.

“They have saved us, giving us all the power we need, but they are lethal.”

Wei was shaking his head as he tried to come to terms with what he was looking at. “It’s an extraterrestrial lifeform, but you say possibly engineered?”

“Yes.” She then frowned, adding, “And we’ve already lost two people to it and a whole habitat. Should it ever get to Earth, I hate to think would happen.

They stood in silence for a while, watching the black lotus.

A voice sounded out over the PA. “Everybody, we’ve got some news coming in from Earth. Bad news. You might want to get to our comms area so you can see the video feeds.”

Wei looked at Ghost, but she just shrugged. She then reached out and took his hand, leading him back to the heart of Xanadu, as she said, “Come on.”

They hurried, and after a few tunnels found a crowd gathered in the comms area. All of them, every single one, was following the various news feeds from Earth. Nine networks in various languages reported the story on every screen.

BREAKING NEWS!

They all told of the same calamity, one of fire from the sky and devastation on the ground. Millions were dead.

A swarm of meteors had hit Earth.

Wei looked around him, stunned at the news like everyone else. Some watched the feeds slack-jawed; others were crying. Amongst it all—and the blather of newsreaders who filled their airtime with speculation and too few facts—the Renegades around him asked the question that had only begun to bubble to the surface of his own consciousness.

Where were the meteors from?

Were they just rocks or chunks of ice from space, or were they carrying black lotus?

For a moment, with his gaze lost as he tried to follow nine news feeds, he saw the dark silhouette of Dog from Base Five Two, still standing there in a ruined corn field. The dead medic grinned at him, lit by the flash of a dying grow light.

Yong brought the images up so Tung could see.

There it was, the gully where the Renegade rover and Mars Command Five’s drone hub had met.

On the last orbiter pass, there had been a debris field—not huge, but big enough even for a compromised NASA orbiter to pick up. But now the site seemed clear.

Commander Tung peered close at the screen, a smirk on his face.

Examining the image, Yong said, “Something is different.”